Remind me to clean their room on the first day...

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

When my boys are away at camp, one of my rituals is to clean out their room. I do it every summer. Every year, I procrastinate and wait until camp is almost over to do it and bitch the entire time. Every summer I am amazed at the amount of crap that they have accumulated in just one calendar year.

My boys share a room. I have a housekeeper who "cleans" it every week and they are in charge of keeping it "neat". I try not to go in there during the school year too much as I get overwhelmed. Instead of working with the crack cleaning team that I have assembled and keeping it tidy, I just turn around and go into another room.

This year, before they left for camp, the team spent a day in the room. I made each child try on every single clothing item which led to me realizing that they had no clothing that actually fit them. They said that they cleaned up the rest of the room. ( I did not verify this). I thought that this would lead to my summer chore of the one-a-year major clean out being a breeze. It was not.

Yesterday I started out under their beds. They each have a loft bed and going in underneath was like a treasure hunt. Here are some of the pearls that I found :

1. Unopened letters that I sent to camp last year

(This is not one of them. I don't have a child named Merdith)

2. A Christmas tin of life-savers (like an 8 pack), also unopened.

3. 3 unopened packages of legos and other little toys that they accumulated but never opened

4. A Target gift card (unused and obviously misplaced)

5. A visa gift card

6. 12 pairs of headphones which was especially annoying given that they are always telling me that they have no headphones and I am always buying them more.

7. Four string backpacks which was also annoying because I had to buy string backpacks for camp because they sad that they could not find any in their closets

It was like an episode of mini- hoarders in my own home. Or we could host a new show called, "Why the Japolina spends all of her money on headphones and usb flash drives instead of designer shoes". We could be the new Honey Boo Boo Family where every one makes fun of how stupid we are.

So once again, I spent one of my precious summer camp days entrenched in their room, trying not to cry when packing up their babyish books to take to goodwill. Once again I am cursing myself for not doing this the first day that they were gone. Remind me to do this task right when they leave next year, and get it out of the way.

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comments:

You are a mom sweetheart...and that how it is. I can remember crying when I would clean my girls rooms. Then I read an article by Erma Bombeck...she said raise kids now and clean when they are gone. That made me stress less over their rooms. Everyone else has the same mess , if they have kids..so why worry? I am sending you a hug, Japolina...I know you could use one. xoxo,Susie

oh the memories that just came back to me! two times a year I would thoroughly clean, reorganize and sort through everything in my kids rooms. before christmas was mostly about going through their toys getting rid of or at least packing up stuff they did not play with only to make room for all the new ones they would be getting for christmas! and then about this time of year when the whole room would get overhauled and every piece of clothing tried on... same as you.. to find out what they really need for school! at this moment.. I can honestly say I sort of miss those days... but only for this moment.. in a minute it will pass and Im be grateful that I dont have to go up into those messes! LOL!have a great day!xoxo

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